Sack single-use bags for today

Cities, grocers join effort that promotes reusables

TIPS FOR REUSING BAGS

Many people have reusable bags but forget to take them shopping. Here are a few ideas:

Keep your car keys with reusable bags.

Stick reusable bags in the trunk.

Clip your shopping list to a reusable bag.

Ask your children to remember reusable bags as part of their allowance.

Hang a bag on the doorknob.

A campaign that started last year to get rid of plastic sacks in Los Angeles County has ballooned into today's statewide effort dubbed Day Without a Bag.

Dozens of cities support the movement, including Encinitas, Oceanside, Imperial Beach and Chula Vista. Local governments, supermarkets and environmental groups are giving away tens of thousands of reusable bags at grocery stores and other locations to reduce roadside litter, save landfill space and keep debris out of the ocean.

The idea is for shoppers to forgo the usual carryout sacks in favor of long-lasting varieties. Some backers hope to turn the voluntary event into a statewide mandate to trim bag use; others hope single-use bags will simply become obsolete.

“We don't want to ban them, but we do want to get people used to the idea that they don't really need them,” said Lynn France, environmental services manager for Chula Vista.

Encinitas Mayor Maggie Houlihan aims to use today's events to build support for a plastic bag ban. City statistics show that Encinitas residents use 35 million plastic sacks each year, and less than 5 percent are recycled.

Encinitas is developing a prohibition against single-use bags that the City Council may take up early next year, though some officials are wary of moving ahead before similar measures have survived legal challenges. City leaders are watching lawsuits in Los Angeles County and other places where the bag industry has sued to stop bag-reduction initiatives.

In the meantime, “we want to get public buy-in and move forward as much as we can with voluntary measures,” Houlihan said. “Given a choice, residents would rather use reusable containers than have more landfills.”

Oceanside officials also are talking about ways to reduce plastic bags, as they build support for a possible ban through giveaway programs. They handed out about 2,000 reusable bags at a September event and hope to double that number today.

“The public is definitely understanding the concept of reusing materials,” said Colleen Foster, a solid-waste analyst for the city.

The San Diego City Council also is expected to consider a bag ban in early 2009, but it won't get passed without a fight. An alliance of bag makers and related businesses, known as Savetheplasticbag.com, has signaled a legal challenge if the city moves ahead.

Stephen Joseph, an attorney for the pro-bag group, said that many proposed bans are based on misinformation about plastic bag pollution. He added that anti-plastic activists have failed to look at the environmental impacts of manufacturing and shipping reusable bags from China.

“These people simplify it and say plastic is bad and everybody feels good, but it's not that simple,” Joseph said.

Day Without a Bag started last December when the environmental group Heal the Bay in Santa Monica organized the event with city and county officials in Los Angeles. It roughly quadrupled in size this year, with participants from Chula Vista to San Francisco.

Several major grocery chains are participating in the San Diego County cities that have joined the campaign.

Organizer Meredith McCarthy at Heal the Bay said the growth was powered by online social networking sites, where fans spread the word in recent weeks.

“As of 10 minutes ago, I had cities calling me saying, 'How can we get involved?'” McCarthy said yesterday afternoon. “It's kind of an exciting movement.”